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"The majority of Americans believe in a woman's right to make decisions about her own body," Vice President Kamala Harris stated emphatically on the debate stage in Philadelphia.
Harris was not lying when she made that point, but what she was concealing—and what many in the media have been concealing, too—is the consensus that's grown within the American public about not just a woman's right to an abortion, but about limits on how long that right should extend into a pregnancy.
A look back at Gallup's polling in 2022 on the issue reveals that a record-high 69 percent of Americans support the right, and there were endless headlines reporting that news. But there was no media fanfare about Gallup's polling on limits to a woman's right to an abortion, and we know the reason why: the outcome was inconvenient. It turns out that after 14 weeks of pregnancy, Americans' support for abortion plunged in the Gallup polling. By 24 weeks—six months into a pregnancy term—the bottom fell out, with nearly two-thirds of Americans against. Two-thirds.
Gallup reported in its 2022 summary that Americans are twice as likely to say abortions at 24 weeks should be illegal—a true American consensus that Harris, the Democratic Party, and most of the mainstream media ignored.
Dig a bit deeper, and the abortion polling gets even more interesting. Gallup data made clear that there are more extremists on the pro-choice side of the aisle: a stunning 19 percent believe abortion should be legal in all cases, while a mere 8 percent believe abortion should be illegal in all cases. And surprise, surprise, that cold hard fact got no media play either.
And so the question remains: why is so much of the media covering for the extreme abortion positions of Harris and most of the Democratic Party—while having no problem reporting the supposedly more extreme position of their political rivals?
It is not just the polling consensus on abortion from the American people that has gone underreported; it's Harris' real-life abortion voting record as a U.S. senator from California—and that of the Democratic Party as a whole.
Let's review that voting history—and by all means, click the embedded links to see the congressional voting rolls for yourself.
During her time as U.S. senator, as former U.S. consul to Bermuda Lee Rizzuto explained in a Daily Caller column, Harris voted not once but twice against S.311 (the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act). The bill would have prohibited health care practitioners, to quote the legislative language, "from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion." In 2019, 53 senators voted for the bill, including three Democrats (Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Doug Jones of Alabama, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia), and 44 voted against—none of the Republicans—leaving the bill short of the 60 Senate votes needed to make it law.
Harris also voted in February of 2020 against S. 3275 (the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act) which would have banned late-term abortions after five months of pregnancy—the point at which unborn children can feel pain. The vote tally was again 53 yeas (including only two Democrats) and 44 nays.
In addition, Harris' party nearly unanimously backed the radical Women's Health Protection Act, a bill that reads like a manifesto for unlimited and unrestricted abortion rights through all nine months of the pregnancy.
The bill, which both House and Senate Democrats have tried to pass, permits late-term abortion procedures on nearly fully formed children. "This inhumane bill has become the Democrat Party's standard," Rizzuto writes. "It garnered a whopping 99% support from House Democrats in both 2021 and 2022, passing the House by 218-211 and 219-210 respectively, with only one Democrat voting against it both years."
But things get even worse when you see how the Democrats, their allies, and the media spin these matters. Consider the Guttmacher Institute, a leading voice on the abortion activist front. A look at their national map of state abortion policies reveals just how out of step they are with the American public when it comes to abortion limits.
The map is color coded, with each color representing differing categories, from most restrictive to most protective. What's most interesting is what the institution considers "restrictive." Click on the "restrictive" state of Pennsylvania, and you'll discover that abortion is legally permissible up to 24 weeks (the sixth month of pregnancy), a limit the vast majority of Americans would not describe as "restrictive." Click the "restrictive" state of Wisconsin, and you'll find that abortion in the state is legal up to 22 weeks. Kansas, another "restrictive" state, is 22 weeks, too. Click Virginia—another "restrictive" state—and you'll discover abortions are legal until the end of the second trimester. Wyoming, another "restrictive" state, is 24 to 26 weeks. That's up to two weeks into the sixth month of pregnancy.
Maybe abortion activists should have a conversation with the voters in those so-called "restrictive" states—and the vast majority of Americans who agree with them when it comes to limits to abortion rights—and recalibrate their definitions.
It's also time for the GOP to have a conversation with the American people about abortion extremism in the Democratic Party, and how Kamala Harris, nonprofit activist groups, and their allies in the mainstream media are out of step with the vast majority of Americans when it comes to limits on abortion.
Rizzuto is one of the few GOP leaders to take a public and pragmatic stand on abortion, pointing a way forward for the party to best communicate the extreme nature of its opponents. "Abortion laws should be left up to each individual state. Late-term abortions should not be permitted," Rizzuto explains. "If the American public understood that these two sentences encapsulate the policies of the GOP and how horrific the policies of the Democrats are, they would support the GOP on this issue."
Voters will decide in November where they stand on this issue. Without strong GOP messaging on the extreme positions of the Democratic Party as it relates to abortion limits—and just how far from mainstream American opinion Harris and the Democratic Party actually are—it may just cost the GOP the election.
Lee Habeeb is vice president of content for Salem Radio Network and host of Our American Stories. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, Valerie, and his daughter, Reagan.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
